You also missed the part where they basically scrapped the whole project in 2005 and started again.

You missed the part where you said "Diablo 3." If you start on a work assignment, then start over, its still the same assignment. My boss wouldn't except the excuse of, "Well I had to start over so the first half of the time didnt count."

My god you people are beyond dense. Blizzard didn't lay off people because they can't afford to pay them. They were laid off because the positions are no longer required. Blizzard is under no obligation to keep all employees forever and always no matter what kind of Utopia you think this country should be.

With the state of economy i feel they should have forgone normal business practicesand keep people working.

Laying-off right now just perpetuates the downward spiral the economy is in.

No offense but you should not link pages that lead outside this forum. I would like to assume this is a safe link as you are a green but this may give some posters the wrong impression and they may think clicking on links that lead outside these forums are safe.

Also are you getting paid buy this website to promote wow forums traffic to go there?I would like a signature panel so that I may make some money aswell off linking outside domains or is your signature panel for sale or rent?

This right here is why this thread needs to be locked. People are just looking for any and every reason to slam Blizzard and anyone associated with them.

The effectiveness of a company that keeps 600 employees just to keep paying them is something that would worry me.

If they lay-off 600 people it is probably because they are realizing the positions are probably not needed or can be down-sized and streamlined. It is in no way their obligation to keep employees working and as sad as it is, just because they can afford to pay them doesn't mean they should pay them if they don't need them.

These are non development positions that probably have, over time, become jobs that are simply fluff and are quite possibly detrimental to a companies communication and performance ability.

I hate to see anyone lose a job...hell my brother has been on unemployment for 3 years and it has been really hard for my family...but I don't expect someone running a business to let people sit in meaningless or useless jobs just so they can have a job. If I ran a company and realized that positions weren't needed any longer I would do exactly the same thing. Restructuring certainly happened. It was probably not as easy as lets cut these 600 people. It was probably more like, "How can we streamline?" - Shifting of work loads, some people probably got raises, and overall, I imagine this will benefit the company and its performance infrastructure.

I don't know enough about economics to say that this perpetuates out economies downward spiral, but there is probably also something detrimental to the economy when companies throw money into workers that are no longer needed. The money saved can be used towards further development, innovations, and protecting company assets. Wasteful spending is just as bad to the economy I would think. But, don't let that be what this post is about please.

You also missed the part where they basically scrapped the whole project in 2005 and started again.

You missed the part where you said "Diablo 3." If you start on a work assignment, then start over, its still the same assignment. My boss wouldn't except the excuse of, "Well I had to start over so the first half of the time didnt count."

If your boss was the person who said to start over, they would understand why it took so long and that's exactly what happened when the higher ups at Vivendi didn't care for what Diablo 3 was looking like.

You know maybe you would be getting things out quicker to us if you kept the 600 people or at least the development part of that lay off if you guys learned to manage your team better and keep the motivated. i don't see how you can justify that you were over staffed when we the players have to wait and wait and wait to even see or hear about upcoming things. Should be more like RIFT those guys can push the envelope even on their content patches. cant wait to see an expansion pack from them. All in all learn to manage your people and you shouldn't have people that are "not doing anything" if you always had something for them to do.